


Precursor

by formidophile



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Kidnapping, Murder, Torture, mentions of bullying, someone straight up dies via fear toxin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-10
Updated: 2018-09-10
Packaged: 2019-07-10 19:15:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15955760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/formidophile/pseuds/formidophile
Summary: An impulsive young girl decides that her ideal Winter holiday would be disappearing for a day, and takes a drive down through Georgia. When her car breaks down before she can reach the coast, her trip takes a daunting and dangerous turn she finds the one person can help her.





	1. Chapter 1

_“Fuck!”_ She banged her fist on the steering wheel, and put her hands to her face in frustration. “Stupid _fucking_ shitwagon.” She took one, deep breath, and pulled her face out of her hands, looking out the windows at the countryside. There wasn’t any choice left but to leave the car and get help.

Which would be easier to admit to herself if she wasn’t stuck in the backwoods of fucking nowhere, Georgia. In December, no less.

“It’s fine. Everything is fine. It’s fine.” She whispering, keeping up a mantra for a moment. She grabbed her backpack, jumped out of the car, and slammed the door in one final act of defiance. 

The leaves weren’t on the trees, but if it weren’t for the situation, the country would have been beautiful. The land was a little flatter than it was in Tennessee, and one could look out for miles, provided it wasn’t obscured by foliage. A few old buildings dotted the landscape, but nothing that looked inhabited.

“Look! Just- Please stop!”

Apparently one of them was.

A decaying house in the process of being swallowed up by brambles and vines, made eerier by the absence of any greenery. It didn’t look like _anything_ could be living in it, much less a person, but the shouting was coming from inside. She stood at the steps and considered how stable they would be.

“They’re all dead! Greg, Bo, Sherry, they’re all- I never bothered you. I even talked to you, please just-”

“No, you didn’t. You sat idly by as they stole my things. Pushed me in the dirt. Threw rocks.”

Two voices. She decided not to take the steps and walk in on whatever was happening within. She circled around to a side and listened, _really_ not wanting to get involved. She saw a rusty truck parked that could have been just as old as the house.

“Look, let’s- Let’s just talk. Please. You-” The man yelped, and she heard something. She couldn’t tell if it was the old house creaking or if it was a scuffle.

“No. No, talking never worked with your ilk.” There was fury in his tone, and more unidentifiable noises. Another yelp. She was creeping closer to the truck and thought about getting a jump from it before she heard the door swing open hard enough to hit the siding.

She stood rooted in her spot with her shoulder up against the house, and considered making a mad dash to hide behind something. She wrung her hands out of fear and heard the steps creaking.

Two men. The first was absurdly tall and must have dwarfed her by over a foot. His hair was unkempt, and fiery red, and his skin was ghastly pale. He was dragging the other man behind him - who was _bound,_ she now noticed, with a decent amount of worry.

They stared at eachother for a few moments.

“Who are you? This is private property.”

“..I, uh. Victoria, I..go by..” She swallowed, and kept wringing her hands. “My car..broke. And..” She pointed to the truck. “Is that..Is that yours?”

“Yes.” The two considered eachother for another moment in silence. “You should go back the way you came.” He ended, dragging the _unconscious_ man past her and started hauling him into the truck bed.

“Please help. I..I don’t know the area, and-”

“You’re in Bullock county.” He shoved the unconscious man a few feet in ensuring he wouldn’t fall out. She came closer.

“Please!” She pleaded, “I- I’ll do anything, I just need help out of here!”

He turned around and considered her. “Do your parents know where you are?”

“..I’m sixteen.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

She shook her head and looked away. She started to wring her hands again. “..They don’t know where I am.”

They were both silent for a moment. She stood there, in a thin black jumper and some shabby boots, and prayed, really prayed for _something._

“Get in.”


	2. Chapter 2

The fact that he only let her ride with him once he learned nobody knew where she was, in addition to the man that was lying in the bed of the truck, did not put her at ease. She could practically hear the alarms going off in her head.

She tried to ignore them.

The truck wasn’t really that old, judging from the inside of it, but still older than what she drove down here in. Her backpack was resting against her feet, and she kept herself pressed to the window and stared out at the passing countryside. They passed her car on the road, still where she left it.

“..Um..We-”

“I have an errand to run first.”

“..Okay.”

The alarms started going off again, and it was getting harder and harder to ignore. She hid her hands in her sleeves and rested her arms against the windowsill. 

“Why don’t you have a phone?”

She snapped out of scenery mode, not-quite turning to look at him. “What?”

“I asked why you don’t have a phone. Are you running away?”

“No! I..” She ran a hand through her hair. “I’m not running. From anything. I just..didn’t need it. That’s all.” Her words coming out a little more stiff than she intended them to be.

He, on the other hand, was as unphased as ever. “Then why the backpack?” He asked. “You didn’t bring a phone, presumably because you don’t want to be found. You’re obviously far from home, but you aren’t dressed for the weather.” When she didn’t respond at all, he continued. “Why are you here?”

She shifted in her seat and looked at her knees. “I..wanted to see if I could.”

“If you could what?”

“..Just..disappear. For just a day.” She started playing with her sleeves again, and hastily added, “Not really. Not- my parents think I’m at a friend’s house.” She sat there, tense, hoping there wouldn’t be any more questions. 

“How long have you been gone?”  
“..I don’t know. A few hours.”

Then there was finally quiet. After a few moments, she felt comfortable enough to look out the windshield, and saw the road was surrounded by forest. She also noticed, despite the clouds coating the sky, the sun was setting. She closed her eyes and quietly cursed herself for leaving home at noon. She certainly didn’t trust herself enough to drive home in the dark, but she really, really didn’t want to think about what she would do for sleep.

They turned off of the road onto a path, the growth surrounding it seeming a little more untamed. But she noticed there was a road in front of them, albeit not a paved one.

“There’s no guarantee that your friend will cover for you.” He didn’t give her a chance to respond. “There’s also a strong chance your license plate was reported and seen on the way down here.”

She could see a lake ahead of them now, and a small clearing. The man pulled off to the side and stopped in the dirt. “You could have been tracked.”

She shrugged her shoulders. “Maybe.” She didn’t like where this conversation was going. She undid her seatbelt, looked out the window, and stared at the lake. It was big, but not huge - she could see the shores of it easily. She heard him leave the car.

Then he came into view again, opened her door, and yanked her out by the arm. “Maybe?” He demanded, shaking her. “If you’ve been tracked down here, then-”

“I haven’t been tracked!” She looked up at him and tried to yank her arm out of his grip. “I- I was lying! There isn’t a friend, that’s just what I told my parents!” She tried to withhold a sob. “Please-”

He tightened his grip on her arm and pulled her closer. "Can you promise that?" He asked. “How do I know with certainty that there’s nothing you’re lying to me about? You don’t even look old enough to be sixteen.”

“Yes I _am!_ I mean- I haven’t been lying to you!” She stepped back away from him against the car, but he kept a hand around her arm. “If you let me go, I can prove it.”

He stared at her for a moment. “Then prove it.” He said, before dropping her arm. She felt the spot lightly, swearing that there would be a bruise there later. “And don’t even think about running.”

She turned to open to the car door behind her and dug around in her backpack for something, and became focused on trying to ignore what could happen _if_ she ran. She pulled out a card from a front pocket and handed it to him.  
“..I told you I wasn’t lying.” She held her arm and shifted on her feet, look around, at the lake, at anything but him. After a moment it dawned on her that she probably shouldn’t have shown a stranger her learner’s permit.

“You gave me a fake name.” He held the card back out to her. After she took it, he left her peripheral vision. She didn’t bother looking up, and just shoved the card into a pocket.

“It’s not fake. I said it’s what I go by.” She swallowed and took her eyes off of the ground, finding him doing something to the truck bed.

“Why?”

“..It..doesn’t feel like it was made for me.” She ran a hair through her hair, trying to find the words. “I just..sort of..replace it every so often.”

Thunk. “What other names have you used, then?” She came around slowly to find he had dragged the still unconscious man out of the back. He wasn’t large, by any means, but the stranger didn’t exactly look like someone who could heft people around.

“..I don’t..remember if I have.” She watched the stranger slowly drag the other man with a practiced ease, but noticeably strained by the weight. She wrung her hands and grimaced. “Can I ask you something? Please?”

“Ask away.” When the man was finally lying right at the edge of the lake, he stood up and pulled something out of his pocket. “In fact, I’m going to teach you something tonight.”


	3. Chapter 3

She hesitated. “You’re going to teach me something..?” Against her better judgement, she apprehensively came closer, until she recognised the object in the stranger’s hands. It was a syringe. She stopped in her tracks. “You know, I..I don’t know what to..call you.”

“Dr. Crane will do fine.” focused on the man that was prone in the dirt in front of him. “Come here.” He rolled the man on his back and gave him a sharp slap to the face, and he quietly groaned. She stayed rooted in her place. He cupped the man’s jaw and watched his face.

She clenched her hands together and fidgeted, looking around the small clearing.

“I was talking to you, Miss Victoria.”

She felt the world tip for a split second. “R-..Right.” She cautiously came over to stand closer to him, but stayed a foot away. She couldn’t see the syringe, but Dr. Crane’s attention was wholly centered on the man slowly regaining consciousness on the ground.

When he saw the man leaning over him, his eyes went wide and he began to struggle against his binds.

“Oh, I would save your energy for what happens next.” He whispered, moving a hand up to the man’s neck and held up the syringe that she saw earlier. She watched the fear creep into his features, and he howled as if something had been torn out of him. She covered her ears and cringed.

“This man,” he said quietly, as if the man had not screamed, “is a coward. Not just because he is afraid, oh, no.” He bit the cap off of the syringe and spit it into the dirt, sticking the needle into the man’s neck and pressing on the plunger. “Pay attention, Victoria.”

As soon as syringe was emptied, she saw the man’s pupils dilate, and he began screaming again in earnest. She pressed her hands against her ears and took a few steps back, curling slightly and tucking her head in her arms.

Dr. Crane made no notice of her retreat, seemingly enraptured by the horrified man beneath him. He took his hands off of the man and looked him over, seeing him struggle and flailing within his binds in vain. “I’ve been wanting to do this to him for so long..” His voice was low, and she was barely able to pick it out through the man’s yelling. The doctor leaned leaned over the man, examining his face for something. “There’s no telling what he sees. A pity.” He straightened back up and sighed. “What do you think?”

He pulled his mouth into a flat line when he looked back at her. She had pulled her head up when he was speaking. She could only muster what she thought was an apologetic expression.

The doctor withdrew a rag from one of his pockets and shoved it in the man’s mouth, effectively quieting his screams, but not silencing them completely. “Better?”  
She took her hands off her ears and untensed, coming a little closer. “I’m..I’m sorry.” She said, her voice coming out weaker than she expected it to. “I really don’t do well with noise.”

He said nothing and waved her closer. She came to kneel down beside him. “Tell me what you think he sees,” he said, gesturing to the man’s horror-stricken expression.

“..I..Is he..hallucinating?”

The doctor leaned over to cup the man’s jaw, peering into his eyes. “He is lost in a world created by his deepest, darkest fears. If he were to survive, he would remember his hallucinations with an uncanny clarity.” As if to push the point home, she noticed the tears streaming down the man’s face, eyes still staring up at nothing, into the sky. “But he won’t. The dose I’ve given him will make sure he perishes in the throes of terror.” He turned back to find her watching him. “You don’t seem perturbed.”

She blinked, and shook her head. 

“Why?”

She sat up and clasped her hands together, and spoke with an unsure tilt of her head. “It..seems a lot like..I heard you talking to him. Earlier.”

“And how much did you hear?”

“..Enough to feel like he..kind of deserves it.”


	4. Chapter 4

She continued wringing her hands out of anxiety after she was done speaking, almost as if she wanted to shove the words back into her mouth, or as if she fears some sort of repercussions. He began noticing things that weren’t apparent when they first met: the patchy scars on her face, nails that were bitten short, and an ultimately drab appearance. There was also the fact that she admittedly had no friends that she could confide in about her little trip.

Empathy. Something spiteful and vindictive lurking under a layer of anxiety.

A choking sound from the man on the ground interrupted his thoughts. He tapped the girl’s wrist and separated her hands, pulling her back to attention. “Watch.”

Strangled noises came from the man’s throat, and his body began to clench as if it was a single muscle, straining for purchase. The binds around his body shaped his flailing to look not unlike that of a beached fish, flopping around uselessly and gasping for air. He seized once more, and as suddenly as he began, he stopped, going utterly limp.

Dr. Crane stood up and began dragging shoving the man off into the water.

“..Is he-”

“Dead.”

“Oh.” Dumping a corpse in a lake sounded easier than it looked. She watched the doctor kick and shove the man through the mud and water until he started drifting deeper on his own, and his own arms and ankles were soaked. Or, at least, it looked like the body was drifting off. It had gotten far too dark to tell.

“We should get moving.” Too dark for her to notice he was standing beside her, holding his hand out. She looked at it and stood up on her own, brushing the dirt off of her knees. A small “Thanks,” was all she could muster.

It had gotten even colder with the night. She held herself and leaned against the door, straining to get a view of the stars from the closed window.

“..What time is it?”

“It’s nearly 8 PM. You’ve never driven at night, have you?”

“..No.” She considered telling him that she had never driven alone at all before this point. The silence hung over them as they drove through the night. She winced as they passed by her car, but made no sound.

They pulled up to the old house eventually. She got out of the car without a word and walked towards the field, running her hands through her hair.

“Where are you going?”

“I don’t know!” She stood there, clenching her fists, and looked out into the field as if it hid the answer to her problems. “I’m- I’m _stranded_ out here! I- I..I have to get home. But it’s..I’ve been here too long, and..” She put her hands on her face and took a deep breath. “I can’t go _anywhere_ right now. I..” She sputtered, grasping for words. The grass crunched behind her as he moved closer. “Helpless. I’m helpless.” She ran her fingers through her hair again and shut her lips tight.

“You wouldn’t be able to find your car at this hour.”

“I know. Please, just..say something. I don’t want to be alone with my thoughts right now.”

“You didn’t plan for this.”

“I didn’t plan for _anything._ I just..I just _did it.”_ The shadow he was casting over her and the empty country that stretched out around them did nothing to calm her nerves. “I thought I was being so fucking _bold_ and now I just feel like a fucking idiot.” She covered her eyes. “Please say something.” 

A tap on her shoulder. “Come with me.”

She pulled her face out of her hands and looked up at him. “Again? Why?”

“Because I didn’t intend on going home tonight. The house isn’t completely decrepit on the inside.” He started through the dead grass back towards the house. “And you don’t really have any other options, do you?”

She followed after him. The steps creaked so much going up them that she was afraid she would step right through the floorboards. 

The house was intact on the inside, even most of the furniture. Everything had a layer of dust covering it, and the walls and furniture seemed to be perpetually flaking, and there were webs everywhere, and the floors creaked, and-

“There are bedrooms upstairs.”

She pulled her sweater over her nose, worried about breathing in the _everything_ that was in this house. “Do the stairs work?”

He said nothing, instead opting to climb the staircase like it was no different than any other. She took to the steps a little more carefully. “Do you know who this house belonged to?”

“It’s mine.”

“You don’t live here, then. It must have been _beautiful_ back when it was lived in..”

He turned into the farthest room on the hall, and looked at her. “We can fix your car in the morning. Try to rest.” Before closing the door and leaving her alone in the decaying hallway.


	5. Chapter 5

She came back in with one strap of her backpack slung over her shoulder and decided to peak around the old house.

Even in winter, the sounds of critters and insects could be heard out in the country, but the house was eerily silent. The only things she heard were the sounds of her own footsteps. The moon out, however, prevented the house from being too dark to see in. She wrangled a flashlight from her bag regardless, and shown it around.

It really must have been beautiful. If she knew her antiques, most of the furniture looked like it was at least from the thirties. It was a shame to be left like this.

She crept to one of the broken windows and looked out at the almost full moon. 

She didn’t have a watch, but she guessed not a lot of time had passed. The moon wasn’t high in the sky yet. But out here, there was no lights to blot the stars.

She flicked off her flashlight and climbed up the stairs. Not bothering to close the door behind her, she tossed her backpack on the bed, and went to the window. Getting it open was a fight- it likely hadn’t been opened in decades, and when she finally pried it, it loudly shuddered up the frame with wood scraping against wood.

Slinking out of the window, she lowered herself onto the roof above the front porch. She let her back rest against the window and looked up into the night sky, forgetting. Forgetting that she was stranded, that nobody knew where she was, and that she didn’t know when she would be back home.

She tried to forget that she had watched a man scream and struggle until he perished. She remembered that she said he deserved to suffer, and meant it.

She closed her eyes and leaned her head against the wall for a moment. Moments turned into minutes, and minutes turned into hours, falling asleep curled up on the cold roof. It was a wonder she didn’t tumble off when someone knocked on the wall next to her head.

He was leaning out of the open window staring at her. “H-..I..Uh..” She rubbed her eyes. “I was..I think I fell asleep. What time is it?”

“7 AM. Your car should work now.”

She brushed her hair down and looked at him. “How? I left the keys-”

“In your backpack.” He slipped back in through the window with ease, and she crawled back in after him with a little more difficulty. “But I don’t think you’ll be needing them.”

“Of course I _need_ my keys.” She brushed some of the leaves and grit off from the roof before moving to reclaim her backpack. She had just shrugged it on when he grabbed her by the arm and turned her to face him. “No, just-”

“Come with me.”

She tried to jerk away from him. “You’re joking. I- I have to get home. You said you would _help me.”_

“I can help you.” He pulled her closer when she tried to escape again, now inches away from him. “You _reek_ of anxiety. You’ve been _squirming_ and _stammering_ the entire time. I can _help you-”_

“I said let me _go!”_

He grabbed her other shoulder and turned her to face him, giving her a shake. “Every monster who’s _humiliated_ you, _beaten_ you, or _degraded_ you - I can help you. I can help you _get back at them.”_

They stared at eachother for a moment. Her eyes darted to the still open window.

She wrenched herself out of his grip and threw her backpack onto the roof, diving out after it. Barely stopping herself from skidding off of the roof, she grabbed her backpack and scooted to the edge of the roof. She didn’t look back at the window, instead opting to slide off the roof and onto the porch steps below with a loud crunch, an abuse that caused two of the steps to finally split.

The pain in her lower back made her cringe, but she stood up booked it, only stumbling once her feet hit the road, and ran until she found her car.

She didn’t look back once.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this thing took way longer than i wanted it to, but it exists now.


End file.
